Chris Corcoran - Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts

Published by Accent Press Ltd 2010

ISBN 9781908917799

Copyright Chris Corcoran

The right of Chris Corcoran to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, The Old School, Upper High St, Bedlinog, Mid-Glamorgan, CF46 6RY.

The Quick Reads project in Wales is a joint venture between Basic Skills Cymru and the Welsh Books Council. Titles are funded through Basic Skills Cymru as part of the National Basic Skills Strategy for Wales on behalf of the Welsh Assembly Government.

Printed and bound in the UK

Cover design by Zipline Creative Ltd
Cover photos Darren Warner

Random
Thoughts

Chris Corcoran

ACCENT PRESS LTD

Introduction

Hello, reader. Thanks for picking up this book. If you are reading it because someone gave it to you, I hope you are not too disappointed. If, however, you are reading this book in a bookshop and youre umming and ahhhing about whether to buy it, then for goodness sake make a snap decision; theres a queue forming behind you. This book is placed at the till for a reason. It is an impulse buy. Youre not supposed to think about it: youre supposed to chuck it in your basket with your Harry Potter. If its rubbish youve only wasted 1.99.

Well, thats the hard sell over. If you are still reading and youve felt even the hint of a smile, theres a good chance youll enjoy the rest of this. Go on, take a risk. At the absolute worst youll have bought an ideal fix for a wobbly coffee table. And at best, you might laugh out loud on a train.

All the best.

Radio Ga Ga

I thought Id kick off this book with a story from my childhood. As a kid I was a massive Queen fan. I liked their early albums best, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Sheer Heart Attack and the like. I liked their 80s stuff too, at the time, although looking back it wasnt as good. Being a Queen fan has been a bit like eating an entire tin of Quality Street in one go: amazing at the start, a pleasure but with diminishing returns in the middle and, by the time you reached Innuendo, all you were left with was the soft-rock equivalent of the Toffee Penny. I was such a big fan I can remember spending one summer holiday not down the beach in the sun like normal kids, but in record shops in Tenby looking for a Queen T-shirt.

In 1989 I was in the Lower Sixth, which, in my opinion, was the best year in school. You got free lessons on your timetable, there was no real exam pressure and we had a common room with a broken sofa. Our days were spent lounging around, playing cards, flirting and being amused by the mangy terrier that would burst in and destroy the pencil case of anyone dull enough to have left their bag unattended.

This was the time sixth formers started getting wheels. One of my best mates, Paulo, an Italian with a passion for motor racing, had got a car. He wasnt a typical Italian when it came to cars. He used to keep to the speed limit, play Dire Straits and, Im sure, if it had been as customary in the 80s as it had been in the 50s, hed have worn a pair of string-back driving gloves. But that didnt matter because for Dan, Sul, The Boy and me, it meant that we had our freedom. All we had to worry about on any one journey was which cassette to play and how often we should sing Ive got a dog whose name is Rover:

Ive got a dog whose name is Rover,

Name is Rover, shits all over,

Ive got a dog whose name is Rover shit,

shit, shit.

Shit on the ceiling,

Shit on the floor,

Shit on the window,

Shit on the door,

Shit over here,

Shit over there, Shit everywhere,

SHIT!

We didnt realise it at the time, but apparently we were in the top three per cent of the country intellectually, and it showed!

All around south Wales we went, down the beach, clubbing in Cardiff, off to rugby matches. And we now had access to school parties. The school party a den of iniquity involving cheap cider, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and clumsy fumbles.

One Friday night we went to a school party in a function room above a workingmens club somewhere in the Rhymney Valley. It was an excuse to dress up and look your best. For me, that meant grey cords, pink Fred Perry T-shirt, Bros hairdo, a liberal splash of Kouros aftershave (it took longer to get out of the presentation box than it took to shave off my tiny bit of bum-fluff) and grey slip-on shoes. In summary? Slick. It was someones birthday party, and wed been told there was going to be a bar and a disco. There was also going to be a girl there I liked.

OK, so there were lots of girls that I liked. In fact, there were very few girls I didnt like. I was a seventeen-year-old sexual firework ready to go off. In fact, ready to go off doesnt do justice to the sort of pent-up energy coursing through my veins. I was a sexual firework who was one spark short of the sort of display that would make the organisers of the 1999 Sydney Harbour Bridge show feel inadequate. And I say I liked this girl, but everyone liked this girl. She was the girl.

Jackie was to a teenage boy what catnip is to a tomcat for she had curves. Proper curves. Olympic curves. Eighth Wonder of the World curves. Is-your-blouse-too-tight-or-have-they-grown-since-this-morning? curves. When she walked past you in the playground the only thing you could do was to give in to the feeling of hopelessness and try not to make a noise. Not an easy thing to do when you consider that what held these curves in check was a white blouse and a black bra. Yep, she had the three Bs boobs, blouse and bra. The Holy Trinity. In the language of three-card brag, she held a prial of threes. To use a football term, she was scoring a perpetual hat trick. She made me go all warm and bubbly when I looked at her. The weird thing was that, apparently, she liked me.

We arrived at the club and as Paulo put on his crook lock, Dan, The Boy, Sul and I went inside. We walked up the narrow staircase to the function room, past the adverts for Singing Star, Danny Star Sings and reminders for members to pay their 1 subs. When we opened the door, there she was, right by the bar.

There she is, grinned Dan, right there by the bar. His deep voice carried his statement of the obvious within earshot. He had a voice that didnt really match the way he looked like a small, skinny prisoner of war from World War Two.

Oh yeah, good work, Dan. Why dont you just go over and say, Hey, my mate likes you?

Do you want me to?

Very funny. Sush.

Cos I will if you want me to. He grinned.

Look, shut up. What you drinking?

Lager, please.

I turned to The Boy and Sul. Boys?

Lager, said The Boy.

Sul added, And a Snowball for Nigel Mansell.

Three pints of lager and an orange juice please, I said to the bar-child.

Weve only got Kronenbourg 1664. Is that all right? she squeaked.

Now there are certain points in your life when you say yes when you should have said no. In hindsight, this was one of them. I didnt know how strong Kronenbourg was.

Yes, thats fine, I said. I needed a drink quick to control the bitter-sweet adrenalin of having been within inches of Jackie, who was wearing some sort of jaw-dropping see-through top and wafting out some intoxicating girl smell. The second half of the same drink would be used to calm the now rising panic caused by her having gone to sit down with her mates across the other side of the room. Still: be cool, I thought. Its a marathon, not a sprint, and at least shes away from Dan.